Mariton: Birches

by Tim Burris, Preserve Manager

One of my favorite Robert Frost poems is Birches.  When I went outside Wednesday morning I looked down the hill to the River Birch (Betula nigra) and thought of that poem.  When the sun came up I was ready with the camera but couldn’t capture the million crystals of ice reflecting light.

“…I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.

As ice-storms do.  Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain.  They click upon themselves…

…I should prefer to  have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows-

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,…”

-Robert Frost

And like the poem I too was once a swinger of birches.